We are happy to announce that The Mulberry House received a Special Jury Mention at DocsBarcelona+Medellín International Documentary Film Festival 2015!

“The four members of the Jury were unanimous in their choice, and the mention was given to the movie for “the risky way that it describes the contradictions of Yemeni society.”” www.docsbarcelonamedellin.com

Last week The Mulberry House was screened as part of the Barbican’s I/Eye in Conflict series, which aims to bring “the insider’s perspective from recent wars, revolutions, uprisings, and occupations in the Middle East, giving access to these experiences as they unfold.”

The series was created due to the organisers’ belief that “First person accounts of momentous events of our time are precious”, a statement that rings especially true for The Mulberry House, which paints an intimate portrait of the filmmaker Sara Ishaq’s family as the events of 2011 explode around them.

Sara Ishaq, one of Yemen’s foremost young filmmakers, speaks to Nader Alsarras about the situation in Yemen following the revolution of 2011, and her second film, The Mulberry House.

The film explores the dramatic change that Ishaq observed when she returned home to Yemen after five years studying abroad, both in her familial dynamic and in the country as a whole. She explains, “For me, the change in my family was like a revolution. It also reflected the transformation of society – a transformation that ultimately led to the revolution.”

Director of The Mulberry House, Sara Ishaq is in Vienna for the film’s premiere on the 10th April. The film won the top Jury Prize at This Human World Festival in 2014, and returned to the city for its cinema release.

After 10 years in Scotland, Sara Ishaq travels back to her childhood home of Yemen and takes her camera along. She hopes to feel at home in the place that was once so close to her heart, but the complications soon become clear. Outside the gates of her family home, people are protesting against President Ali Abdullah Saleh’s authoritarian rule, and Ishaq and her family quickly become caught up in the movement.

Sara Ishaq returned to Yemen’s capital Sana’a in 2011 partly out of an attempt at reconciliation with her father, while also with the intention to make a film about her grandfather as part of a project for film school. Little did she know that she would witness the start of a revolution in Yemen, that soon after her arrival Sana’a would be swamped with people en masse, protesting in an attempt to overthrow the then Saleh government ….Read More